At the museum I work at every friday, The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, we are currently running an animation exhibit in cooperation with Cartoon Network. It shows the history of animation, various techniques etc etc. Anyways a young aspiring artist/animator came in to see the exhibit and was showing me his portfolio. He is very talented.

The talk eventually turned to video game animation. He then stated that Pitfall The Mayan Adventure on the Jaguar had some of the most awesome 2D animation he's seen in a video game. Earthworm Jim being another game he thought had excellent animation and one of his favorite games. In his portfolio he has a fiber optic character that is somewhat EWJ inspired.
I asked him if he had a Jaguar and he said no he played it at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo last month. He also liked Rayman on the PSX for its animation. He was surprised when I told him Rayman was created on the Jaguar.

What came after the Jaguar was the PS1 which for all it's greatness, ushered in corporate development and with it the bleached, repetitive, bland titles which for the most part we're still playing today. - David Wightman

Nice. Always cool to get these youngsters into this stuff. LOL And Pitfall is awesome on the Jaguar. The extra frames of animation are surely very nice. The extra stuff put into the Backgrounds was really cool too.

This is a stick up! Put all of your 3DO games in the bag and nobody gets hurt!

That's really cool to hear. The Jag version's animation isn't any better than any other, but it does have the benefit of having a higher color count than the Genesis/CD or SNES versions of the game. It's still a solid version. Regardless of which one you play though the game has excellent animation.

Austin wrote:The Jag version's animation isn't any better than any other, but it does have the benefit of having a higher color count than the Genesis/CD or SNES versions of the game. It's still a solid version. Regardless of which one you play though the game has excellent animation.

Agreed.

Seems we have to go through this EVERY time, but the SNES/MD versions run at a silky smooth 60fps while the Jaguar versions suffers from a lesser framerate which, for me, really affects my enjoyment of that version, as I grew up with the superb SNES version (my favourite) and now always turn to the MD/GEN version if I want my Pitfall fix, as opposed to the Jag version...

This game is pretty hard (for me) and I've never beaten it on any system. Have given it tons of time on the Jag in past years but always end up re-shelving it. Recently though, I hacked the Sega CD version with Infinite Health, Infinite Fire Bombs, Invulnerability, Infinite Stones and Infinite Boomerangs and am close to finishing it

The Jaguar does have some good platformers that were mostly overlooked back in the day becuase everyone wanted 3D and 2D platformers were starting to fall out of style for a while. Of course the 3DO and other 32-bit platforms got some too, but the Jag does compare favorably next to the 3DO in the platformer department.

Aside from Gex (and ones they have in common), I think all the platformers listed for the Jag are better. But what am I missing platform wise on the 3DO? Surely there were more...
I'm pretty sure I have all Jaguar platformers listed, aside from a couple home-brew mini games and unfinished alpha/betas.

With all the games listed above, here is my personal order of best to worst:

Rayman
Flashback
Gex
Pitfall
Another World (Out of this World)*
Hyperforce
Bubsy
Zool 2
Phoenix 3
Soccer Kid
Alice's Mom's Rescue
Johny Bazooka (personally I could never figure out how to even pass the first level on this game)

*both are unique but equal, the difference being different artists with their own interpretations. Worth having both for such a classic game.

Austin wrote:The Jag version's animation isn't any better than any other, but it does have the benefit of having a higher color count than the Genesis/CD or SNES versions of the game. It's still a solid version. Regardless of which one you play though the game has excellent animation.

Agreed.

Seems we have to go through this EVERY time, but the SNES/MD versions run at a silky smooth 60fps while the Jaguar versions suffers from a lesser framerate which, for me, really affects my enjoyment of that version, as I grew up with the superb SNES version (my favourite) and now always turn to the MD/GEN version if I want my Pitfall fix, as opposed to the Jag version...

Isn't standard animation framerate supposed to be a "silky smooth" 24 frames per second? Is it possible to see a split screen comparison that shows this "lesser framerate?"

Austin wrote:The Jag version's animation isn't any better than any other, but it does have the benefit of having a higher color count than the Genesis/CD or SNES versions of the game. It's still a solid version. Regardless of which one you play though the game has excellent animation.

Agreed.

Seems we have to go through this EVERY time, but the SNES/MD versions run at a silky smooth 60fps while the Jaguar versions suffers from a lesser framerate which, for me, really affects my enjoyment of that version, as I grew up with the superb SNES version (my favourite) and now always turn to the MD/GEN version if I want my Pitfall fix, as opposed to the Jag version...

Isn't standard animation framerate supposed to be a "silky smooth" 24 frames per second? Is it possible to see a split screen comparison that shows this "lesser framerate?"

Not to mention that it was discussed at length that the Jaguar version runs differently on the PAL Jaguar than it does on the NTSC, as can be the case with some of these games. Pitfall runs just fine in 60hz.

This is a stick up! Put all of your 3DO games in the bag and nobody gets hurt!